It makes sense that some things are noisy. On construction sites, employees are given head sets to block out extra noise. I had some kind of sound blockers when I worked in an ink factory.
I remember as a teenager, laughing when I saw someone put an egg next to the speakers at a heavy metal concert. At the end of the concert, the egg was boiled. Was it boiled at the beginning? Would only heavy metal music do that, or was it the loudness of being straight by the speakers?
In any case, I have found that all kinds of entertainment, things far from heavy metal, now have noise levels that would be considered unacceptible in some countries.
At first, I thought maybe it was the language of the entertainment, when the film was in French, perhaps the sound technicians couldn’t tell that it was too loud. It was so loud, that you couldn’t understand the words, because the extra echo destroyed the sound quality. Kind of like a heavy metal song, but this was just a normal french movie. I found that using earplugs actually made the film easier to hear, because blocking the excess noise brought the film to a normal level.
I have since found the same phenomenon in other cinemas, and even watching musicals. The genre was not metal or rap, or any loud genre, and I wasn’t near the speakers.
Possible explanations? The average age is going up in Romania. Perhaps the sound technitions are getting old and losing their hearing. Perhaps they do not have meters to tell them that noises are reaching dangerous levels.
Another phenomenon I’ve noticed is more sonic booms. At first I thought this was a minor earthquake. But, these are too often, and no earthquakes have been reported. Commercial airplanes could be flying lower, but why would they suddenly be doing that? Perhaps I was coincidentally in a different part of Cluj at the times of the low flights? No, these boom/shake sounds and feelings are at every time of day.
Are they related to 5g masts or AI datacentres? I doubt it, this is pretty central in Cluj, and it would be expensive to build AI datacenters here.
Could it be military aircraft? Possibly. Maybe that, combined with military drones.
If it were other areas, I might suspect fracking, but there have been no reports of recent fracking near Cluj. There were protests against fracking over a decade ago, and it seems to have stopped.
The way the noise travels, it doesn’t sound like manufacturing. It could be underground weapons testing, theoretically.
I might suspect the metro, but that hasn’t really been happening. And, I’ve lived above metros in other towns, and visited many places where I have been above metros, and never heard anything like that due to transport. In fact, whatever is causing the noise might destabilize any work being done on the metro.
What is causing the noise then? Perhaps whatever it is is happening illegally.
In any case, the noise level and other disturbance level is up in Cluj, so I would not recommend the place for someone trying to get away from noise.
I think it might be linked to the noise in the entertainment venues. How? Those who regulate atmospheric noise are also aging, and losing their ability to detect sonic booms. Perhaps the equipment in both cases is also aging, and should be repaired or updated.
While animals normally don’t attend the shows, I do fear for pets with the sonic booms. These “mini earthquakes” must be disturbing to dogs and other animals that can sense things, including humans. It is annoying.